The Queen's Viper Read online

  “Then may God grant that I am not the last.” Amy spat in Viper’s face. The spittle fizzled on Viper’s cheek. Amy grit her teeth and scrambled on her hands and knees for the stairs.

  The delicious cruelty Viper experienced on the day of Elizabeth’s Coronation surged within the immortal. Infuriated at the woman’s tenacity, the Daoine Tor grabbed Amy by the scruff of the neck and made her stand to face to face.

  Viper’s breathing remained slow and steady. “I hath a new hunger which cannot be satisfied by humaine aeir.” Viper’s malevolence coveted Amy’s simpering body. “Tell me, thou weak and pitiful woman, why should I deny the part of myself which yearns most precipitously to feel flesh tear away from thy body?”

  “Because I refuse it of thee!” Amy grabbed a lit candle from the table in the hallway and shoved it in Viper’s eye. Viper screamed and raised her hands to her skull. Amy, now freed, turned and threw herself down the steps. Her body swerved around the tight corner with a shriek.

  Viper descended after the humaine two steps at a time. Amy lay at the bottom of the stairs, her head contorted at an unnatural angle. Blood leaked from her mouth. She had sustained a second, fatal injury to the back of her skull.

  Amy’s aeir floated above her corpse. The magic’s sallow fragments pointed at Viper in accusation before dissolving into the ether. Viper turned a dusky lavender, her body freezing.

  She knelt beside Amy’s lifeless body and pulled the ribbon from Amy’s ponytail. Serosanguinous fluid matted the mortal’s hair. Viper moved slowly as if afraid the dead humaine would come back to life, seeking retribution. Stinging tears flooded the immortal’s eyes. Her heart was full of attrition. Her head battled the gleeful darkness within. Viper realized that the savage streak within her, that had sent her to Cumnor in the first place, was not a protective instinct.

  The darkness was something much more sinister.

  Viper found it horribly attractive.

  15: The Sisters

  The River Medway, Maidstone.

  June 4, 2012: early afternoon.

  Viper paused at the halfway point across the footbridge in the heart of Maidstone. A gentle breeze made her long, silver-white tresses ripple like the river below. The modern bridge celebrated the passing of the Millennium, another event in human history missed by the immortal. She faced the Archbishop’s Palace dominating the Medway’s eastern edge. A two-storey structure comprised of ashlar masonry in off-white stones and auburn clay roof tiles, the palace’s watery twin wavered in an overcast reflection. The bubbling of the river that soothed the human ear stirred memories in Viper that made her cringe. Where there was water, Annys could find her. Viper wasn’t prepared for confrontation.

  Beside her, Clare said, “It’s like the river turns away from that building, shy of its beauty.”

  Viper placed her hands on Clare’s shoulders and guided her to the far end of the bridge. “These treacherous waters came long before the Archbishop. The truth of the bend in the river’s path lies deep under the grounds of the palace, of which I may speak unto you one day. Secrets lie beneath water and earth, one of which will not make ye well met.”

  “And the other?” Graeme asked, fingers wrapped around the handle of the dirk on his belt. He disguised his guns beneath a lightweight jacket. A second blade, his sgian dugh, rested in the top of his sock. He and Dhillon walked behind Viper and Clare on a bridge wide enough for them to walk four abreast.

  Viper flashed him an angular smile. “That depends on how desired they are to meet thee.” She led the way to a rectangular field behind All Saints College, south of the Archbishop’s Palace. Ravens darted through the branches as the group walked between the young oaks lining the perimeter of the playing field.

  The immortal stopped in the middle of the green. The ravens took flight and massed around her, cawing madly. Clare raised her hands and covered the microphones in her auditory processors. Dhillon protectively put his arm across her chest.

  Viper maintained her stance and raised her hand to the humans. “Be not perturbed. This unkindness of ravens intends thee no harm. They are the eyes and ears of the Sisters.” Viper pushed her fingertips into the grass, voice low. “Sisters! Should your winged companions tear out my tongue afore you hear my utterance, then you are like to be ill-fated as once was I. By a power unknown, I hath escaped Annys’ prison. If she can bind me, then woe betide unto us all.”

  The ravens flew around Viper in widening circles, forcing the humans backwards to the fringe of the clearing. With a final squawking chorus, they fled to the trees. Dhillon wrapped his arms around Clare. Graeme unsheathed his dirk.

  Hundreds of thin vines grew out of the ground, winding counter clockwise around Viper’s limbs. She held still. Several of the vines intertwined horizontally into a crescent shape on her back. A thicker vine wormed over Viper’s left shoulder, wove under the crescent, turned ninety degrees and then crossed over the right side of the crescent, before curling over her right shoulder. The vegetation formed a glyph that looked like an inverted chevron entwined in an arch.

  Clare pushed away from Dhillon and rushed forwards. As she did, the ground between them bulged. The rising pile of earth knocked Dhillon off of his feet. Six additional mounds, eight feet tall and almost as wide, formed in a circle around Viper and Clare. Stems of thrashing vines as broad as Graeme’s thighs erupted from the mounds. Delicate, pink, conical flowers bloomed amidst heart-shaped leaves.

  “Bloody Hell, it’s weed henge!” Graeme sputtered. “Those columns are made of bindweed.”

  Dhillon rushed for Clare. Before he reached her, the pillars split into eight parts. The top of each segment curved to the ground with a thump, becoming the legs of faceless, spider-like Greenwardens.

  A Greenwarden thrust out a vine and pulled Dhillon into its outer layers. “I have to get in there!” he yelled.

  Graeme hacked at the plant restraining Dhillon. Long arms from the adjacent guardian bound Graeme’s arms behind his back and encircled his throat. The arachnoid creation dragged the struggling man into its core.

  “Harm it not!” Viper bellowed. Only her head remained free of the twisting plants. “’Tis Devil’s Garters, a binding spell of the Sisters. He who doth fight the Greenwardens finds their green garters wrapped about his neck till he is strangled of life.”

  “Clare is being eaten by the bindweed!” Dhillon protested, leaves in his face.

  “She freely gives herself to the ground, thus she lives. Thou may be less fortunate.” Viper’s voice disappeared as vegetation and earth swallowed her and Clare.

  Viper rapidly adjusted to the sudden undergloom. Rich minerals in the soil permeated the air. She sighed with pleasure at the familiar scent, so natural compared to the fumes of London. She saw Clare crouched on the ground, her breath shallow as she listened to the scratching sounds in the subterranean tunnel.

  The immortal opened her hand and illuminated the space with her elldyr flame. She and Clare arrived in a roughly circular room, its walls and ceiling supported by intertwined roots. Four subterranean paths continued in opposing directions. Viper looked over her shoulder at the route that led to the Archbishop’s Palace. She didn’t want Clare to know of the mysteries underneath the historical building.

  To Viper’s relief, a floating white stream of elldyr magic forked its way towards them from the passage furthest away from the Archbishop’s Palace. The long wisp transformed into a pair of hands. One caressed the visitors’ faces and the other invited them deeper. Clare pulled back. Viper took the girl’s elbow and coaxed her into the wide passageway.

  Dangling roots brushed Clare’s face. “Is this why you’re the people under the rocks, because you live underground?” She crinkled her nose in disgust while moving into the unknown.

  The immortal couldn’t bring herself to reveal the depressing truth to the woman who followed her blindly. Viper did not know her own history.

  “I once thought myself most alone in the world. Some event in the Sisters’
lives drove them down here long afore my life with Elizabeth led them unto me. The Earth doth hide and nourish them.” Viper’s forlorn green and black eyes didn’t reflect the levity of the ethereal white magic she followed. She nudged aside a large stone with her boot so that Clare wouldn’t trip. The immortal sensed a loyalty in the young woman, reminiscent of Princess Elizabeth. Clare’s unsolicited devotion worried Viper. “Ask of me no supplementary questions. My memory is a companion which serves only to flame my animus.” Viper continued through the short tunnel in silence, her dark silhouette leading Clare.

  Two female voices greeted them simultaneously before Viper and Clare cleared the passage. “Four to the door, and two come through. Enter, and be welcomed, or be forsaken.”

  Hanging roots blocking the way split apart on their own. Viper and Clare entered a tall, seven-sided room lined with Kentish ragstone. Known for its toughness, the variegated grey ragstone walls were twice as high as they were long. Glow worms nestled in fine mesh balls suspended from the ceiling. Roots criss-crossed everywhere, forming nooks and shelves. Nesting robins chirped in a corner. A giant fire opal with smoothed corners occupied the centre of the room held within a matrix of vegetation and stone. The colourful inclusions in the stone glittered with life.

  Six of the walls bore white limestone blocks as tall as a man, framed by roots. The elldyr creft hands, living fingers of moonlight, caressed five limestone slabs, each bearing a deep-relief landscape carving. The sixth limestone block was split in two by a ragged crevice.

  The elldyr creft hands retreated into two embracing Daoine Tor. The Sisters of the Maiden Stone sat on an earthen bench turfed with grass and wildflowers. Two pairs of leather shoes peeked out from beneath matching long, black wool skirts. The white elldyr magic of the immortals shimmered over their lower garments, the gathers of which were so full that each of the Sisters was indistinct to the other.

  Viper grasped the outer hands of the kinfolk she had not seen for centuries. They had identical heights and builds, with distinctly unique features. One Sister wore a flint grey, loose-knit sweater like a cloud drifting over her earthy skin. Long laugh lines emphasized the hills and valleys of her face beneath carefully sewn rows of black braids. The other Sister’s snug shirt, in green shades of field and forest, turned her back-combed hair into a dandelion seed head flouncing in a gust of wind over grass. Her skin was the colour of striped sandstone. Both had heart-shaped faces, downturned eyes and narrow lips. Neither smiled.

  “It warms my cockles to see you so unchanged,” Viper said tenderly. Scant amounts of black showed in her eyes as she beheld the Daoine Tor she once revered. The sclera of the lighter skinned Sister’s eyes were red and the other’s yellow. Black circles pulsed calmly from the centres of both.

  Only one Sister moved her mouth at a time, with both voices combined. “One seeks Us as One left Us. We are One within the circle.” The deeper voice grounded the lighter, while the airy one softened the tones. They still spoke in riddles.

  Viper compelled herself to stay calm and humble. They had not forgotten the harshness of her time with them. “Friends, long was I entrapped in Annys’ prison, lost to time and the world. I come afore you to beg of your charity. I know the last words I spake unto you were less than kind. I thought I had an abundance of time to make amends for my shameful departure. Then Annys bound me with magic and did keep me from you. You hath saved the humaines who travel with me by using your magic upon the earth and wind. For that I owe unto you a great debt. Be that as it may, e’en now I hath little time to be with you in this, your retreat from the world.”

  “Humaines above and below; within and without. A protector and a lover; one false, one true.”

  The roots in the ceiling acknowledged the statement with a quiet shake.

  Viper glanced at Clare behind her. The young woman studied the limestone carvings, seemingly unaware of the other immortals in the room. Viper doubted this girl would be any more immune to the need to be loved than had been Elizabeth. If Dhillon was the false lover, Viper could do little to stop him from breaking Clare’s heart. However, Viper could stop the Sisters from killing him to keep Clare happy.

  “For success in my attack upon Annys, I am burdened with humaines. I thank you for permitting the girl’s entrance into your domain. I must ask of you to free the men. Mind you, should a faulted romance arise betwixt one of them and the girl, it is of little consequence unto me.”

  The Sisters regarded Viper. The years in their faces weighed in upon her.

  “If they are free, the girl is at harm. She will stay with One and be safe,” they said.

  “We will not hide underground from Annys,” Viper protested with a scowl. Some part of her wanted to keep Clare and her intriguing past for herself. The Sisters each held a single finger in the air to stop the conversation. Viper knew they were as stubborn as stone and wouldn’t hear her plea until they investigated Clare for themselves.

  Moving in unison, with their arms still around each other’s waist, the Sisters stood up and gestured to Viper to move aside. She dug her nails into her palms and let them pass. If Clare had been paying attention, she would have found it unusual that the Sisters moved in such an awkward way. Viper knew the reason. The Sisters were joined at the hip and torso, two souls sharing one body.

  “We live widowed of time. One is too long alone,” the Sisters said to Clare as they came up behind her.

  “These reliefs of the British countryside are captivating,” Clare said to the Sisters in awe, as though they had been in the middle of a discussion. “That stone circle landscape is like a painting I made that hangs in the kitchen at my group home. I was there, in Scotland, during one of the few times I went on vacation with my family. I’ve read that limestone is a soft rock which carves easily, but I never imagined this level of detail.” She traced her hand over the bark of a chiselled tree. Its leaves quivered at her touch. Deer sculpted of stone that had been grazing in the field fled into the woods.

  “The stone breathes magic. Magic imbues life,” the Sisters said. They each placed a hand to either side of Clare’s. Radiating elldyr creft flooded the atypical canvas. Woodland creatures came out of hiding, nuzzling the energy. “Your eyes are his eyes. Your hands remember the life he shaped.”

  “What? Who?” Clare’s inquiry dissolved when a host of white sparrows popped out of the panel towards her and into the room. The robins joined them in a flying race around the room before the sparrows returned to an adjacent panel. Clare tracked the birds with delight and bumped into the Sisters. All three burst into spontaneous giggles.

  “Enough cavorting.” Viper’s haste swelled her anger. The robins hid in their nests. The Sisters positioned themselves between Clare and Viper. “Speak unto me how I can defeat Annys. When Annys hath met her peril, I will give you the girl. Then wield your power upon her unhindered by the press of time.”

  The Sisters’ elldyr creft flashed like lightening against the ragstone walls. “One remains impetuous. The heart of One’s past will fix One in the present.” An additional turfed bench formed, sprouting flowers like jewels in sunshine. A winding staircase of roots descended from a newly formed hole in the ceiling. The robins flew through the exit as fresh air wafted into the interior from outside. “With Us, One is strong. Apart from Us, One is weak.”

  The refrain Viper had heard over and over in the past reached her ears. “I say unto you now as I hath said afore. I do not wish to live like an animal buried under your roof.”

  “One’s arrogance makes One fall. One’s envy leads to One’s failure.”

  “Why can you not yield unto me a simple answer?” Viper lamented and threw her hands into the air with exasperation.

  The vivid elldyr of the Sisters waned to nothingness. “One is here. One is there.” They moved aside, which both cleared Viper’s line of sight to Clare, and permitted Clare’s access the stairs. “The Medway holds the beginning. At the midway, find the end.”

  “Your cryptic wor
ds are thin of meaning and thus serve me little purpose,” Viper said with frustration, “as they hath ever done.” She reached for Clare and, grabbing her, made for the exit. Pale roots wove together in front of them, barring their way. Viper whipped around. The limestone animals regarded her with intense white eyes.

  “The Glass of Mort Lake masters One, although the sage is dead,” the Sisters cautioned, in a rare moment of clarity. “Make haste, for another One seeks its power from beneath our stones.” In a water-side landscape, a pelican in its nest nodded its head before it pierced its breast to feed its younglings.

  Viper muttered the words Mort Lake. That was the home of Elizabeth’s sage, whom Viper hated, and the place where she could have changed everything, had she understood the capacity of humaines.

  Somehow, the Sisters found and hid the Sage’s Glass. If Viper had access to the Mort Lake Glass, she could overcome Annys. Spurred on by the hope that she would finally best her enemy, Viper ushered Clare out of opening. The dirt sealed behind them.

  They emerged beside a concrete amphitheatre alongside the river, downstream from the College green. Viper's first breath above the Sisters’ underworld exploded into laughter. The longer she laughed, the more she wanted to cry.

  “What is it?” Clare asked Viper, her eyebrows in an uneasy furrow.

  “The Sisters,” Viper began and faltered, catching herself on the verge of a sob of relief.

  “Yes?”

  “They hath finally delivered information of use unto me and I do not know how to follow their advice.”

  “Why not?”

  “The last I saw of the Mort Lake Glass, it trapped me in Annys’ prison. The Sisters hath suggested I use the tools of the sage, but I do not know where to find them.”

  Two spidery Greenwardens bustled through the trees. They spat Graeme and Dhillon at Viper’s feet before descending into the earth.

  Graeme jumped to his feet, dirk in his hand. “What the bloody Hell just happened?”

  Clare rushed to Dhillon asking, “Are you OK?”